There was a burst of brief static, but instead of returning to the real world, she found herself floating in a thick cloud of darkness again.
What the…
A cursor flashed for several seconds until a series of letters appeared in successive order.
C:\>CyberBolt.exe_
Why didn’t I exit the game?
A string of coding sped past her field of vision, followed by the familiar music-box like hymn of Conquest. In a flash of light, she found herself back inside Doug’s cabin.
“Back so soon?” he chuckled.
“What?!” she panicked. “I can’t leave the game!”
“What do you mean?” Doug swiped his hand to the right to close his virtual screen. A look of concern crossed his face.
“I… I…” Brittany took a deep breath. “You saw me! I tried to log out, but instead I looped right back here.”
“That’s odd…” Doug raised an eyebrow, “Here, I’ll take a look at your avatar’s source code.”
He brought up his keyboard and typed a series of commands. An alert then popped up in her NR enhanced vision.
@Andrex has offered to review your avatar’s programming source code.
WARNING!
Changing source code in-game may cause your player experience to become unstable.
Do you wish to proceed?
Yes | No
Brittany ignored the warning and pressed Yes. A string of coding appeared before both of them in mid-air. She watched as Doug scrolled through the code, looking for any anomalies.
“So what happened, exactly?”
“I tried to log out, and then I ended up in a dark room. My entire field of vision was filled with a blinking cursor, followed by a string of code.”
His eyebrow raised. “Do you remember what the code was?”
“It was just the executable file for Conquest. As if I were installing the game for the first time.”
His lips pursed. “Is this the first time that’s happened?”
“Yes…” She paused as the memory came back to her. “Err… No, I guess not. It happened earlier, too.”
“When?”
“Before our PVP Match.”
“Can you remember what happened in RL before that?”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Her eyebrows scrunched. “Hang on. My memory’s a bit fuzzy.”
She stared into space for several moments, trying to jog her memory of the cursor.
Why can’t I remember what happened?
Doug broke into her reverie. “Did you hit your head or something?”
“No, I don’t think so…” Then the memories from the precinct came flooding back.
“Holy…” she gasped.
Brittany’s eyes widened, and she took several calming breaths.
“I…” she stuttered. “I… I was decommissioned…”
“What for?” Doug asked.
“I stumbled across an anomaly with CyberBolt’s Law Enforcement Terminal,” she explained. “Not that you’d know what that is…”
“On the contrary, I’m quite familiar with it. “
“You are?”
I used to be an officer too. Didn’t I tell you that during our PVP match?”
“Oh yeah…”
“What kind of anomaly was it?”
“I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about it.” she gave him a strange look. “Besides, how do I know you’re really an officer and not just some punk trying to get information out of me?”
“I was an officer.” he corrected. “I got decommissioned too. My full name is Doug Carlton.”
She faced him full on. “Doug Carlton? You’re the Doug Carlton? As in, the officer from the Chicago South Precinct put on permanent probation?”
A disturbed look fell across his features. “Do I know you in RL?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’ve heard about you. I’m from the South Precinct too.”
“Small world.” He cupped his chin in his hand. “What do you know about the National Security Agency?”
“As in the corrupt government agency?”
“Precisely.”
“I know that way back in 2013 one of the NSA’s contractors leaked incriminating documentation about their worldwide cellphone data collection practices. Then he fled the country and obtained asylum in Russia.”
“What happened to the NSA after that?”
“Well, after years of public outcries, the NSA was dismantled.”
“Wrong,” he countered. “They just went into hiding.”
Great. He’s a conspiracy nut. And to think, I was starting to like him.
“I have a hard time believing that,” she scoffed. “How could such a massive organization go into hiding for a decade and remain unnoticed?”
“Humor me for the moment. The data collection practices were the most highly contested and the most publicized act the NSA was committing, but the leaked documentation revealed much more than that. Not many people understood that the NSA was using that data to track the movement of billions of people worldwide using cellphones. Additionally, the NSA maintained security vulnerabilities, or rather ‘back doors’ in most software and encryption available on the market. This left the programs susceptible to cyber-attacks by the NSA as well as other possible parties.”
“I remember my father telling me about this at the dinner table when I was a child.” Brittany said. “I thought he was just being his usual paranoid self.”
“It was a pretty hot topic back in the day,” he replied. “After a certain NSA contractor went rogue and leaked this top-secret information to the media in 2013, the NSA limped along for years as the public and the President of the United States called for the NSA to be dismantled. Meanwhile, cell phone companies were revisiting their software encryption programs and rewriting them to exclude the NSA from extracting data from their customers. Overall, the future of the NSA was looking dismal, so they hashed out a new plan.”
“What plan?”
“Are you familiar with radio-frequency identification technology?”
“You mean the RFID tags they inject inside pets?”
He nodded. “Yes, exactly. After the NSA recognized how bleak their future looked, the director instructed all personnel to relocate to their old underground locations worldwide. These were existing federal buildings and US embassies throughout the world, where they had secretly built additional subterranean basements during the initial construction of these buildings. After they relocated, they made a public announcement that they were dismantling their program.”
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